Gwmayhem wrote:

The sample size is now large enough that we can identify team trends within the A10 to be aware of as we enter the home stretch of the regular season.  Here are a few notable ones: 

1) Among the top 5 scoring defenses, GW is 1-4.  St. Joe's is 6th and Loyola is 7th.  On the other hand, GW will have upcoming opportunities against UMASS (13th), La Salle (14th) and Fordham (15th).

2) GW has been very vulnerable against physical teams.  This shows up in two areas:

a) Offensive Rebounding.  GW is 0-4 against the top 5 offensive rebounding teams (UMASS, VCU, La Salle and Duquesne) with Fordham (at #5) still to come.  Conversely, GW is 5-1 against the 5 worst offensive rebounding teams in the conference.

b) Blocked Shots.  The team is 0-3 so far against the teams that block the most shots, with #1 St. Joe's on deck.  Loyola sits at #4 and a return game with #3 UMASS await.

3) Teams that share the ball have struggled against GW's defense.  GW is 3-1 against the top 5 in assists.  Loyola is tops in the conference and St. Joe's is 6th.  

4) Somewhat related to #3, GW's defense gets fired up against the better shooting teams.  They are 4-0 against the top 5 in the conference (Loyola is at #5) and are just 1-2 against the bottom 5 (games with #11-Fordham, #14-UMASS and #15-La Salle are upcoming). 

I think the biggest takeaway here is that GW can ill afford to be intimidated against physical teams.  They are 0-2 against UMASS and La Salle with chances to avenge those losses.

Don’t know what to make of these trends, but my feeling has been that the St Joe’s game may be a bad matchup for us, while I like our chances to win at Loyola.

From what I've seen of St. Joe's, they are not well-coached, meaning we aren't going to be carved up by exotic sets.  We definitely have our work cut out for us guarding the Hawks' 3-point shooting (Erik Reynolds averages almost 2 more than Drumgoole per game), but if we do that well, I think we can hold our own.